The overall annual expenditure for each of the next three years was announced in the Budget, but the departmental spending plans for the next three years are still being finalised and ministers are...
An expert on primary care has called for a radical reassessment of the worth of common clinical treatments, saying they should be subjected to rigorous testing and those judged ineffective withdrawn.
Plans to eliminate a £1.5m deficit at a Northern Irish NHS trust have been rejected by its local health board, which is unhappy with proposed cuts in services.
Asylum seekers must be offered more than just a roof over their heads in the provinces if the government's new dispersal policy is to prove successful, according to an Audit Commission report,...
Knowsley Borough Council is facing legal action for compensation from the family of a boy killed by a mentally ill man who four days earlier had been deemed not to need social services support or...
The government is aiming to bring about up to 1,000 extra adoptions a year, with Prime Minister Tony Blair weighing in with a plea for a national register.
The government must introduce legislation to help improve adoption services and deliver a joined-up approach, the Local Government Association said this week.
The NHS is struggling to cope with demand for diabetes services and faces a rising number of patients as the population ages, the Audit Commission warned this week.
The government launched a stinging attack on the quality of adoption services this week in what could be the first move to loosen local authorities' grip on social services.
Bath and North East Somerset's social services department must improve its children's services if it is to meet the challenges of Best Value, according to a joint report from the Audit Commission and...
The National Assembly for Wales has announced an extra £2m for children's services following a damning report that traced two decades of child abuse in local authority homes.
The first of a rolling series of Audit Commission and Social Services Inspectorate reports into Welsh social services have produced a winner and a loser.
A High Court victory by homeless families who objected to being placed in seaside accommodation will add to the spiralling cost of homelessness in London, local authorities warned this week.
Seventeen local authorities placed under 'special measures' by the government have complained that they were treated unfairly by being named and shamed by social care minister John Hutton.
Councillors are over-whelmingly white, male and middle-aged and they are putting off prospective candidates, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned this week.
Home Secretary Jack Straw this week committed Britain to accepting 1,000 Kosovar refugees a week and promised local authorities that the government will foot the bill.
The government's success in driving forward the Private Finance Initiative in the health sector was underlined this week with the signing of two further large contracts worth around £190m.
